BRAVE JOURNEYS with TAMMI FARADAY

Stephen Jon Thompson is a distinguished leader and Tech Executive whose job it is to find the most elite talent in artificial intelligence for the world’s most cutting-edge technology & consumer companies - Including; Nike, Amazon, LinkedIn, Apple & Google. So, it might be reasonable to assume Stephen was born into a beautiful family, with a silver spoon in his mouth, had an IVY league edu...

Laura Cathcart Robbins is an acclaimed culture writer, storyteller extraordinaire & now beloved host of The Only One in the Room Podcast. Laura’s survived post-natal depression; struggled through debilitating addiction and divorced her high-profile, Hollywood juggernaut, ex-husband.  And when life felt very much rock bottom, Laura met her long-time love and collaborator Scot, in rehab… as you...

MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING!!! From the age of eight, Dr Michelle Stevens was brutally tortured and enslaved, raped, and pimped out to countless men by a sadistic paedophile; a man who passed himself off as her father. After suffering more than ten years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, Michelle escaped and with superhuman strength, Michelle chose not to give into despair and vowed - that no ma...

Are you in for a treat BRAVE JOURNEYS family? Today’s guest is a bona fide superstar.  But that’s not why I love him.  And I really do love him. 36 hours after Jono Lancaster was born with Treacher Collins syndrome - a rare genetic disorder that effects the development of the cheek bones, jaw, chin and ears -  his parents abandoned him in the hospital, claiming they were “horrified by Jono’s physi...

Doctor Mark Cross has worked in psychiatry for three decades and specialises in treating young people, complex PTSD, women’s mental health & anxiety disorders. Mark’s also a senior Lecturer at the University of NSW & a conjoint lecturer at Western Sydney University.  He sits on the Board of SANE AUSTRALIA - whose mission is to improve the health of those living with complex mental health i...

Susan Burton is the one-time producer & now editor of the Pulitzer Prize winning weekly public radio show and podcast - This American Life - heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations across America; with another 2.5 million people downloading the podcast each week.   Susan’s radio documentaries have won numerous awards, including an Overseas Press Club citation, & The film Unac...

Eilene Zimmerman noticed that the man who’d loomed large in her life for nearly 30 years - her ex-husband and father of her two children – PETER – seemed increasingly out of sorts.   He’d been looking progressively thin, seemingly preoccupied, couldn’t shake flu like symptoms and was becoming a more and more unreliable parent to their kids. Eilene assumed Peter’s appearance and erratic behaviour w...

Never before in the history of humankind has it been possible for a woman to give birth to an infant who is genetically unrelated to her.   Never before has it been possible for a woman to be the genetic parent of children to whom she has not given birth.   Never before has it been possible to bring children into the world in more than 30 ways.   Never before has it been possible that a child born...

When Joe Hyman left his parents at the airport for a year away at a religious seminary, he was carrying so much more baggage than just his suitcase.  His then hidden gay identity, dragged behind him wherever he went.   A few months before leaving for his gap year abroad, Joe found what’s known as a conversion therapist online, falsely peddling a so-called cure to same sex attraction.  And as time...

What happens when the love of your life — your husband, your best friend, the father of your 3 week old baby - who’s gorgeous, funny, tall, exotic, and wonderfully attentive; the person you’ve basically banked your whole life on, turns out to be a psychopath?  This was the agonising question facing my next guest - JEN WAITE – as captured flawlessly in her international best-selling memoir, A Beaut...

If you’re a parent, pulling your proverbial hair out at the life force that is social media – you really don’t want to go anywhere for the next hour.   My next guest, Kirra Pendergast, will tell you exactly like it is; she won’t pull any punches; she won’t sugar coat a thing; but she also won’t make you feel like a lousy, negligent parent for not knowing more than your kids do.  And believe me, wh...

Believe me when I say this is one of the most egregious cases of a miscarriage of justice you’ll ever hear. SABRINA BUTLER SMITH’s story can only be described as your very worst nightmare.  At 17, Sabrina was a young, single mother to two children including her beautiful baby boy, Walter.  When Walter was nine months old, Sabrina came home after a jog and found him in his crib not breathing. After...

If you’ve ever second guessed yourself, hated yourself or harmed yourself because you weren’t a certain number on a scale.  If you’ve ever been humiliated because of your size or praised when you shed kilograms in a hope to fit in and be good enough.  If you’ve ever deluded yourself that living a life of deprivation makes you somehow more virtuous, more desirable, more worthy - then you’ve absolut...

If you’ve ever wanted to know what deep, profound, abiding, altruistic, passionate, inspirational love looks like – this is the episode for you. Jason Rosenthal enjoyed a wonderful but quiet life. He was happy to have his extraordinary wife – Amy Krouse Rosenthal - the celebrated children’s book author, memoirist, filmmaker and all-round glorious human being, settle in the spotlight. Then, on Vale...

Sometimes you come across a person whose story breaks your heart, but whose will and determination for good – despite, or perhaps in spite – of the horrors they’ve faced, will ensure that they’ll leave the world better than they found it. Fred Guttenberg’s story will make you press pause on this episode and go and love the ones you love harder than you’ve ever loved them before – but it’s what Fre...

When Professor Gemma Carey was 12 years old, a man twice her age would sneak into her bedroom on a weekly basis and sexually assault her.  When Gemma was seventeen, she took the perpetrator to court without anyone else knowing and had him placed on the child sex offender’s register.   Perhaps most startling is that for 20 years, Gemma’s mother had known about her daughter’s abuser. But why hadn’t...

Dr Matt Morgan is an intensive care specialist, scientist, teacher, self-professed geek and now best-selling author.  But to me, Matt’s a profound philosopher, helping the world make sense of what it means to live, to survive, to give your all, & to show up when you don’t think you can.   He thought I wanted I to chat to him about his worldwide bestseller – CRITICAL: STORIES FROM THE FRONT LIN...

Caro Llewellyn was living a dream life in her adopted home of New York, directing an international literary festival and even calling Salman Rushdie “boss”. Then one ordinary day, running in Central Park, she lost all sensation in her legs. Two days later she was diagnosed with MS. But Caro wasn’t a stranger to life’s blows. Her father Richard contracted polio at the age of twenty and spent the re...

Greg Fleet - or Fleety to comedy lovers around the world - has been one of Australia’s most successful comedic exports for almost four decades.  For much of that time, he also lived with a devastating heroin addiction. The rap sheet of his many deceptions during the haze of his habit, included touring an incredibly successful show about his miraculous recovery.  The only problem was, he was comple...

When Joselin Linder was a teenager, her beloved dad, Dr William Linder, became mysteriously sick in his 40s.  His doctors, as well as medical professionals across the US and around the world, watched his body slowly decline.  But there were no answers.  By age 49, he was dead.  One of the world’s leading genetics research teams - at the Seidman Lab at Harvard Medical School – discovered that Jos t...

Mark Lukach courageously shares the story of how his future changed unexpectedly at 27 years of age, when his wonderful wife Giulia - with no history of mental illness - was first hospitalised on a psych ward after a devastating mental health crisis.  Mark first wrote about Giulia in the New York Times "Modern Love" column (Tam’s all-time favourite column) & again in a piece for Paci...

Dr Nicole Brooks is pure sunshine.  A beaming smile and down to earth nature that belies the gravity of the work she does… day in, day out.   You see, at 15 years of age Nicole, lost her beautiful mum, Susie, to cancer.   And she’s taken that tragedy and profound loss and converted it into devoting her life to cancer research and improving the lives and health outcomes of patients.   Nicole holds...

Where should I start with today’s guest – apart from confessing that he’s a lifelong hero of mine?  Clive Stafford Smith is one of the world’s most distinguished Human Rights lawyers and the Founder of ‘Reprieve’ - a UK based legal NGO that defends marginalised people who are facing human rights abuses, often at the hands of powerful governments.    Clive’s dedicated over 25 years working on behal...

For Isabelle Oderberg, professional success was a given.  A trailblazing journalist who’d spent 15 years pioneering digital journalism and going toe to toe with Rupert Murdoch at expansive boardroom tables.  But on the personal front, success, was not, well… so assured.   When Isy decided at 34 that she wanted to become a mother, she had no partner to embark on that journey with.   Having courage...

Nicole Meyer is one of three sisters who was allegedly sexually abused by her female school principal, Malka Leifer, in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Adass community of Melbourne.  When claims against the former principal came to light, Leifer was bundled onto a plane to Israel in the middle of the night, by the very community, that hired her to lead it. After 12 years of doggedly fighting for justicv...